Something to Teach, Something to Learn

Something to Teach, Something to Learn Theological Education for World-Mending

David Hadley Jensen

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.” – John 10:10

John’s Gospel teems with contrasts: light and darkness; followers of Jesus and those who refuse to follow; life and death; belief and doubt. In this memorable saying, which occurs in the middle of the gospel, Jesus contrasts those who would destroy life with his own ministry, which is for the life of the world. Jesus comes not for a select few, not to promote a thin slice of life, but to bless all creation. Jesus is Good News because he shows us the way of abundant life.

What might theological education look like if it kept the aim of abundant life in sight? This essay offers one attempt at articulating a Protestant interpretation of theological education for the public good, an attempt that views the flourishing of Christian community as bound up with the flourishing of the world. I approach this interpretation in three movements: 1) by surveying some trends in the United States that obscure flourishing; 2) by offering some examples of theological education in Roman Catholic and Jewish contexts that Protestants might learn from; and, 3) by suggesting a more intentional reflection on place, or geographical loca

David Hadley Jensen is academic dean and professor in the Clarence N. and Betty B. Frierson Distinguished Chair in Reformed Theology at Austin Seminary. His most recent of ten books, Christian Understandings of Christ: The Historical Trajectory (Fortress, 2019), offers an analysis of how Jesus’s question, “Who do you say I am?” has been answered. He earned the MAR from Yale Divinity School and the PhD from Vanderbilt University.

tion, as a way in which Protestants might recover a vision of education for the life of the world. But first, I need to offer a clarification: when I speak about theological education, I am not restricting myself to professional education for ministry. Professional training is one aspect of theological education but not its totality. Theological education occurs not only in seminaries, but in Sunday school classrooms, in living room Bible studies, and over labors of youth mission trips. Theological education is integral to discipleship: intentional reflection, undertaken with others, as one grows (and sometimes atrophies) in Christian faith. Though much of what follows focuses on seminary education, most of what I have to say is equally applicable to education in congregations. 1

Theological Education and the Narrowing of Vision Some trends on the American scene—and typical responses to these trends—risk obscuring a vision of theological education for life abundant. The trends are significant and require serious reflection. The first is the changing pattern of Christian seminary enrollment nationwide. During the ten-year period between 2006 and 2015, enrollment at the Association of Theological Schools (ATS)-accredited theological schools declined from 80,400 students to 72,116, 2 a decline that cut across all traditions: evangelical, Roman Catholic, mainline Protestant, and historically black. Most of this decline was related to master of divinity (MDiv) enrollment, with mainline Protestant seminaries experiencing a 24% decline in that degree program since 2007. 3 These declines have stabilized over the past two years, but overall decline has not reversed. Seminaries are now (especially in MDiv programs) significantly smaller than they once were. Perhaps it comes as no surprise that many mainline seminaries have either closed their doors or merged with other seminaries in response to these trends.

Seminaries ignore these trends at their own peril. Nonetheless, an obsessive focus on the decline of traditional enrollment patterns is equally perilous. Linger long enough with the statistics and panic is likely to sink in: I have attended enough ATS meetings and read enough literature about enrollment patterns to know that lament over a lost golden age is powerful mythology. 4 Panic over a decline in MDiv enrollment ignores signs of life in other corners: an increasing hunger among laity for substantive Christian reflection, marked growth in non-white student enrollment, certificate programs that emphasize the integration of faith and life. 5 And, most destructively, panic over enrollment leads to a myopic inward turn: saving an institution or a degree program at all costs. When panic sets in, theological education loses its focus on life abundant.

A second, and related, trend is analogous unease over the condition of mainline Protestantism. The trends, if not the statistics, that frame this unease have become widely known. Many Americans no longer spend Sunday mornings in sanctuaries, but on soccer fields, in coffee houses, or in pajamas in the living room staring at an iPhone. Almost without exception, membership in the churches that provided a semblance of religious “establishment” in the past has consistently declined over the past two decades. 6 Americans have become more suspicious of institutions in

general and more reluctant to affiliate with traditional religious organizations in particular. In response to these trends, denominational resources have also declined, as have the patterns of connection that link congregations within an ecclesial tradition. To be sure, these trends are not uniform: inspiring signs of life are nearly ubiquitous in denominations that are experiencing decline. But even amid thriving congregations, a de facto congregationalism typically emerges. The temptation, given these patterns, is to long for the past and work to recover what has been lost, to shore up the structures and offices of the denomination that remain. Attention turns to the denomination itself, its survival amid the stormy cultural seas.

I don’t want to dismiss this concern. I am more convinced than ever that denominational traditions, in their uniqueness, offer riches for the church catholic. Reformed emphases on God’s sovereignty, suspicion of idolatry, and concern with the public good 7 are themes that the world desperately needs to hear. So, too, are Methodist emphases on personal holiness and Anabaptist interpretations of pacifism amid the countless wars that scar the planet. Without these distinctive witnesses, the church is invariably poorer. But when denominations focus their attention primarily upon survival, they risk muffling their distinctive gifts. Curving in upon themselves, denominations can lose sight of the abundant life Jesus calls his disciples to embrace. And thus Protestant theological education can become a lastditch attempt to shore up a crumbling institution. What alternatives are there amid these trends?

Theological Education Beyond the Mainline Over the past few months I have spent considerable time learning from faculty, administrators, and students at several theological schools that Protestants often do not consider: Roman Catholic seminaries in Austria and rabbinical schools in the United States. I wanted to look beyond the typical Protestant conversation partners to see how these schools were envisioning theological education amid similar trends. Austria offered one intriguing comparison with the American context: there, trends of secularization and pluralism are more advanced than in the U.S.; there, establishment Catholicism is coming to grips with dramatic declines in religious affiliation. I chose to examine a few Jewish seminaries in the U.S. because, in contrast to Protestants, Jews have rarely understood themselves to be part of the American religious establishment. Their status as a minority religious group in society, which has often been hostile to their very existence, has had an impact on rabbinical formation and what makes the Jewish witness different from the prevailing religious winds. And yet, this impulse to articulate Jewish distinctiveness has rarely resulted in a narrow focus on the community’s own survival. As I spent time at four different institutions, I discovered refreshing signs of theological education focused on life abundant.

In Austria, I encountered much that contrasted with standard approaches to theological education in the United States. Candidates for the priesthood live and share meals at a seminary, which is entrusted with spiritual, personal, and ecclesial

formation, while they take academic coursework (in the standard theological disciplines) at a state university. Students study in the context of a large, interdisciplinary public university, which is in some cases hostile to the very study of theology. This apparent conflicted atmosphere means that candidates for the priesthood are not educated in a bubble (as some would argue American seminaries provide), but experience theological education in conversation with the wider world. Though the seminary offers a refuge, at times, from voices that question its existence, it is also self-consciously engaged with wider societal issues. 8 The turn, in short, is not inward, but outward. The questions I heard in these seminaries were not so much, How do we survive? but, How do we proclaim the Gospel in this place, at this time? Students at these seminaries, almost without exception, are engaged in pastoral residencies from the beginning of their studies. Rather than embarking on onetime field placements that occur after a requisite amount of academic coursework, these seminarians take part in mentored internships throughout their course of study. Pastorates, in a variety of settings (rural and urban), provide laboratories for reflection, informing seminarians’ work in Bible, theology, and philosophy. Congregations thus play a central role in educating the next generation of leaders.

In comparison with the standard Protestant MDiv, however, the course of study in Austria is lengthy, consuming seven to eight years. A full two years in this program is devoted to philosophical studies. Students begin their theological education with broad questions of the good life, foundations for ethics, how persons come to know, and the nature of truth and justice. Theological study begins by turning to the world and what it means to be human within it, a turn that draws on the Christian canon and resources beyond it. The turn, in short, is outward to patterns of flourishing in the world.

At the rabbinic schools, I encountered different emphases still. One of the most riveting practices I witnessed was havruta (reading and interpreting Talmudic texts in pairs or small groups). On the day that I observed this practice at one school, the text focused on thorny branches that extended across property lines into common spaces and the question of responsibility for injuries caused by the branches. The students delved into legal minutiae and issues of translation. At first glance, it might appear that these discussions were not applicable beyond the arcana of this specific text. But what I witnessed were discussions that took seriously personal responsibility beyond ordinary expectations. Responsibility for others does not end at the property line. In a litigious age such as ours, at a time when “passing the buck” and absolving oneself of responsibility seem the ordinary course, these discussions focused on law and the common good. God’s commandments are for the flourishing of the world. Jews have been engaging this practice of havruta for hundreds of years. The method of reading and translating these texts might have been done in nearly the same way in fifth-century Jerusalem, tenth-century Granada, or twentieth-century Warsaw. Little has changed in the practice of reading, and yet everything has changed in the world in which students read. This classical practice insists that reading is always undertaken in community, as text speaks to the world. One of the faculty members I visited at another seminary described this as the

perennial Jewish task, of sensing the fresh voice within the ancient tradition. Reading texts, in this sense, is never fully accomplished; drawing on the past, it always begins anew.

Facility in Hebrew and biblical and Talmudic texts—not surprisingly—comprises much of standard rabbinical education. The typical course of study, like that of Catholic priests, is significantly longer than the Protestant MDiv, with five years being the norm for Reform and Conservative rabbis. Much of the curriculum is classical, focused on the transmission of ancient traditions, texts, and practices. And yet innovation appears within this classical formation. One of the schools that I visited requires rabbinical students to take a course in an affiliated business school, emphasizing that synagogues can learn about organizational dynamics and management from best practices in the for-profit and non-profit worlds. Another school emphasized coursework in community organizing, noting that the synagogue is always embedded in a larger network of persons and communities in the work of mending the world. Both schools that I visited also expend significant time exploring the history of anti-Semitism, a powerful reminder that forces of hate bent on destruction surround the people of God. One class explored the rise of anti-Semitism in social media, how ancient hatreds have gained new megaphones through technologies designed to connect rather than destroy. There is much in the world yet to mend.

Perhaps the most significant thing I learned from my visits to other theological schools was this: ancient practices, texts, and traditions continually speak fresh wisdom to a world in pain. Some of the practices that I witnessed have existed for more than a thousand years. Others were not immediately “practical.” American Protestants often invoke the criterion of “relevance,” that theological education might be cured of its ills if it could only be made more germane: more practical coursework, new pedagogical techniques, more intentional focus on perceived needs in congregations. But what I witnessed in each of the schools I visited is that our chief responsibility isn’t making the text relevant; we don’t need new techniques. The relevance is in the ancient traditions themselves, the deepest cries for healing, the deepest longings for justice, the call to be a part of the healing of the world. The traditions turn us outward, never in on ourselves. The practices are for the sake of life abundant.

Place in Theological Education: A Protestant View As I learned from the traditions I walked alongside (if even for a brief period of time), I knew there were some things that might resonate in a Protestant context (such as an emphasis on communal reading) and other things that would probably fall flat (such as lengthening the MDiv program by two or three years!). I came home wondering about potential Protestant contributions to theological education committed to the mending of the world. One area, potentially, is the Protestant understanding of place. Unlike Catholicism, which regards certain places as holier than others (pilgrimages, shrines, etc.), and unlike Judaism, which attaches special significance to a singular place (the land of Israel), Protestantism has a more indis-

criminate attitude toward place. In Protestantism, no place is holier than another, and yet every place is already holy, suffused with God’s blessing.

On the one hand, (in)attention to place is one of the great weaknesses of the Protestant tradition. The Reformers were leery of describing some places as especially holy. Just as all vocations are blessed by God, so, too, are all places. And because every place is holy, one ought not attribute too much significance to any one place. The strength of this understanding of place is that theological education can occur anywhere. The weakness is a detachment or decontextualization from place that sometimes occurs in Protestant education. When I consider my own theological formation, I barely heard a whisper of the voices from the places that surrounded the two schools where I studied (in New England and Tennessee). For all intents and purposes, the education I received could have happened in North Dakota or Hawaii.

Yet Protestantism also has resources for a renewed attention to place. Because all places are holy, because all persons are called by God uniquely, all persons and places call out for hope. There is no place in the world where God is not already at work for the renewal of all creation. The Lutheran tradition is especially strong in recognizing the existential dimensions of Christian faith: the calling of each Christian, in the encounter with the God revealed in Jesus Christ, to the present moment, wherever one finds oneself. The Good News encounters us in this time, in this place, as we bear witness to Christ’s reconciling work in the world. Metanoia (conversion) is to God and neighbor, right here, right now. I think that a recovery of this dimension might propel theological education in the Protestant tradition to take into greater account the place of their theological schools and the ways in which the particularity of that place emerges in theological study. Taking Austin Seminary’s Central Texas borderlands location into account, this approach highlights at least three issues that call for world-mending: 1) immigration; 2) climate change; 3) increasing religious diversity.

Texas is Exhibit A of the changing demographics of the nation; and, it is also a place with a complicated, rich, and tragic cross-cultural history, of conquest of indigenous populations, of discrimination against people of color. Amid this tragedy is the persistent, cross-cultural mix that forms the culture of Texas, a culture that refuses to be reduced to any one thing: Comanche and Anglo; Tejano and AfricanAmerican; Asian and Ashkenazi. To study theology here is to be immersed in the borderlands, of border-crossings and a border that crosses people. The last several years have brought the issue of immigration to the fore of the national consciousness: from misguided attempts to “close” the border (whatever that would mean), to the plight of children separated from their parents, to the recognition that the well-being of one side of the border is bound up with the well-being of the other side. When we read the Christian scriptures in this place, our eyes are opened again to the migration that permeates the biblical record: of the journey of Israel out of slavery in Egypt into freedom in the promised land; of Israel’s exile at the hand of a powerful empire and its longing for return; of Jesus’s family who must flee into Egypt; of a Savior who has “nowhere to lay his head” (Matt. 8:20) and wanders from

place to place preaching the Good News; of a prophet to the Gentiles who traverses the Mediterranean world. The story of God’s people is a story of immigration, of people on the move. The witness of theological education, in this place, is to sense immigration as promise rather than threat.

To study theology in this place is also to hear the groaning of creation. Texas bears a disproportionate share of the effects of climate change, with a cycle of droughts and hurricanes that have wreaked catastrophic destruction in recent years. A study of economic effects of climate change identifies several counties in Texas among the most negatively affected in the nation. 9 To study theology in this place requires us to reckon with the consequences of sin and greed and to consider how our behavior of seeking unlimited gain damages ourselves, others, and the fabric of creation. And yet to study theology here is also to recognize that the glory of God is creation fully alive, 10 that our destructive behaviors do not have the last word, and that the way of creaturely flourishing is the way of Jesus Christ.

Finally, as Texas (and Austin in particular) experiences astonishing population growth, from all corners of the globe, its religious diversity increases. Austin, in short, is no longer a town in the Bible Belt (if it ever was); it is Jewish, Hindu, Muslim, and Christian. To study theology in this place is also to come face to face with religious difference. Sometimes in Christian tradition, otherness is perceived as a threat. But the promise of abundant life in Christ is that others are gifts. The people, cultures, and traditions of the world are claimed and blessed by God. Each person has something to offer the other: something to teach, something to learn, and the simple beauty of being with each other. One of the renewed tasks of theological education in this place, at this time, is an increased stress on practices of good neighborliness among religious communities, how we might better share and receive the gifts of each other.

Attention to place in theological education will also require renewed focus on congregations, the places where theology is lived out in the company of others. Congregations are not the places where seminary learning is “applied;” they are themselves educational incubators. They are the shapers (for good and for ill) of the ancient traditions that call out for fresh readings. They are the places where Christians reflect on their growth (or stagnation) in faith. They are the places where wisdom is passed from one generation to the next. They are the places where the Gospel takes root. Each congregation is unique; each is embedded in distinct communities; each bears unique gifts for the world. By paying attention to place, these congregations are entrusted, by God’s grace, with the work of mending the world, with nothing less than education and practice for life abundant. v

NOTES

1. I owe much of this understanding of theological education to the work of Edward Farley. Farley was one of the first to assail the “clerical paradigm” that has affected American theological education, how Protestantism in the twentieth century reduced theological education to preparation in independent skill sets for ministry. Farley argues for a recovery of theologia, or belief-ful formation and growth in understanding, rooted in faith in God. As such, theological education is the work of the people of God. See Farley, Theologia: The Fragmentation and Unity of Theological Education (Philadelphia: Fortress Press,

1983) and The Fragility of Knowledge: Theological Education in the Church and the University (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988).

2. Chris Meinzer and Tom Tanner, “What a Difference a Decade Makes: As Seminaries Reverse a 10-year Enrollment Decline, What Does the Future Hold?” https://www.ats.edu/uploads/resources/ publications-presentations/colloquy-online/what-a-difference.pdf, accessed December 6, 2019.

3. Eliza Smith Brown and Chris Meinzer, “New Data Reveal Stable Enrollment but Shifting Trends at ATS Member Schools,” https://www.ats.edu/uploads/resources/publications-presentations/colloquy-online/new-data-reveal-stable-enrollment.pdf, accessed December 6, 2019.

4. I am referring to the side conversations that often occur at ATS meetings, the laments of some seminary administrators over enrollment stagnation and the collective sense of loss that can emerge on the edges of these meetings. At the same time, ATS is actively countering this mythology by encouraging seminaries to re-examine their approaches to theological education in light of changing student patterns and imagine possibilities for the future.

5. Between 1977 and 2017, the number of racial-ethnic and international students at ATS schools increased from 9% to 41% of the overall student population. Brown and Meinzer, “New Data.”

6. Church membership declined from 70% of the American population in 1998 to 50% in 2018. Jeffrey M. Jones, “U.S. Church Membership Down Sharply in the Past Two Decades,” https://news.gallup.com/poll/248837/church-membership-down-sharply-past-two-decades.aspx, accessed December 6, 2019. In the relatively short time span of seven years culminating in 2014, mainline Protestant affiliation declined from 18.1% of the population to 14.7%. Pew Research Center, “America’s Changing Religious Landscape,” https://www.pewforum.org/2015/05/12/chapter-1-the-changing-religious-composition-of-the-u-s/, accessed December 6, 2019. To be sure, that are still 46 million mainline Protestants in 2014 and 163 million church members in 2018 (10 million more than the total population of the U.S. in 1950), but the trends are significant. 7. The final chapter of Calvin’s Institutes is devoted to civil government, or the ways in which Christian faith spurs us to work for a more just society.

8. One example of this public engagement was a conference I attended on “the divided society,” focused on Christian witness amid intense public debates. The conference included seminarians, professors, laity, clergy, and political representatives. The topics—immigration, increasing income inequality, and political polarization—had obvious parallels in the US.

9. Eileen Drage O’Reilly and Alison Snyder, “Where Climate Change Will Hit the U.S. Hardest,” https://www.axios.com/where-climate-change-will-hit-the-us-hardest-1513303282-6566eea4- 6369-4588-88cc-c2886db20b70.html, accessed December 6, 2019.

10. This is an expansion of Irenaeus’s claim that the glory of God was “humanity fully alive.” See also Elizabeth A. Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad, 1992), 14-15.